This text is about birds. For data on the male porn actor, see www.pornstarswithbirdnames.com (disambiguation).
Whereas there are 8 species of woodcocks worldwide, solely two – the American and the Eurasian ones – are widespread. Because the American one is suspected of getting voted for Donald Trump within the 2020 election (regardless of this being towards its personal curiosity – elevated gun possession is just not doing the species any good), this publish solely focuses on the Eurasian one.
Shanghai is simply on the Northern fringe of the species’ wintering vary, so the birds proven right here might keep for the winter or transfer additional south.
Apparently, the identify “woodcock” comes from Center English and is a mix of wudu ‘wooden’ + cocc ‘chicken’. It appears the identify can be used as an insult – a woodcock is a nickname for a naive or gullible particular person. Equally, the German identify “Waldschnepfe” consists of the phrase “Schnepfe”, which is used as a light insult for a woman or girl, or as a derogatory time period for a prostitute.
Whereas the woodcock has giant (and reasonably endearing) eyes, the sphere of view is reasonably slim, although lengthy. Apparently, retinal fields within the horizontal aircraft are 182° huge, and there’s no blind sector on the margin of the optical fields (source). It feels like I’d like to have that sort of imaginative and prescient when on the lookout for birds – although the paper states that such complete visible protection in all probability happens solely in species that rely primarily upon senses aside from imaginative and prescient to information foraging. I’m not positive I perceive the logic of this, however I assume evolution does.
The HBW has the scary data that “as much as 3,700,000 people [are] hunted yearly in Europe, with 1,500,000 in Italy, 1,300,000 in France, 400,000 in W Russia and 200,000 in Britain” and provides that “there have been ideas that such harvests are unsustainable and must be regulated”.
Wikipedia even states that “Eurasian woodcock are thought of at their greatest for culinary functions from October to December … the meat could be eaten as a starter, savory, or for breakfast. A chicken serves one particular person.”
By the way, the big variety of woodcocks hunted additionally established the idea for a study analyzing the significance of millipedes within the autumn-winter food plan of the species. The authors “examined the autumn-winter food plan of the woodcock Scolopax rusticola from 407 gizzard samples originating from Crimea and Italy” and located a excessive variety of millipedes in all of the samples (the paper consists of the reasonably unhappy assertion that “the current authors had the chance to acquire a pattern of greater than 200 illegally shot specimens from Crimea and confiscated as they have been being imported to Italy”).
The place do woodcocks feed? As you may think, ornithologists have requested this query earlier than. The answer they’ve give you is as follows: “The vital components figuring out the place feeding happens are in all probability security from avian predators and excessive availability of earthworms.” It appears steady wifi connections aren’t that vital to woodcocks then.
Eurasian Woodcock with sad earthworms
One other paper that includes Eurasian Woodcocks was printed within the reasonably pompously titled “Science of The Whole Atmosphere” (you may form of think about a fanatic chief asking an viewers of scientists whether or not they need the “complete surroundings”). Anyway, that paper regarded on the concentrations of heavy metals in soils, earthworms, and tissues of woodcocks in Quaderna Valley, northern Italy.
The woodcock has an interesting-looking feeding motion – bopping up and down whereas shifting ahead very slowly. I didn’t discover any data on the aim of this bopping – perhaps it makes earthworms come out as they assume it has began raining? You’ll be able to watch this habits here, assuming that my try and add the video has labored.
On the constructive aspect, it appears deer aren’t an issue for woodcocks. Evidently conservationists fear in regards to the impact of accelerating populations of deer on birds depending on understorey vegetation – however a study discovered no impact of deer shopping on the diurnal density of Eurasian Woodcocks.
Not everybody likes woodcocks – eBird appears fairly unfavourable, calling the species “weird and cumbersome-looking” and including a gratuitous comment about its “fats physique”. Perhaps eBird ought to examine fat shaming …
Given the angle eBird has towards the woodcock, it appears a bit hypocritical to criticize the species for being “pretty frequent however hardly ever seen; energetic primarily at nightfall and daybreak”. If everyone referred to as me fats, I’d act the identical means – solely come out at night time to feed.
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